Lome Journal; Trail of Brutality Mars Rebel's Return to Civil Life

Meet the aging fighter from the bush in his five-star hotel suite, the sitting room table covered with proposals to end the endless war and spare his life.

At work and at play, here in l'Hotel 2 Fevrier, was this near-mythical warrior from the thick bush of Sierra Leone, Foday Sankoh, who had so seldom ventured out of his jungle redoubt that his very existence was once in doubt.

Mr. Sankoh, 63, the leader of the Revolutionary United Front, was inclined to be satisfied: a peace agreement for his country was at hand, a pardon for himself.

But then there was the delicate matter of atrocities. After describing themselves for years as freedom fighters, the rebels in his organization had committed some of Africa's worst atrocities in the last two years, hacking off the hands, arms or legs of countless ordinary Sierra Leoneans in a highly effective campaign of terror.

''I'm not denying that,'' Mr. Sankoh said of the atrocities, ''but not on such a scale.'' Given the crushing evidence against his organization, his words should not be surprising. But it was the first time that the subject of amputations and mutilations was not met by flat denials by Mr. Sankoh or his commanders.

Ever the survivor, Mr. Sankoh -- who has been imprisoned by Sierra Leone's Government and its allies since 1997 -- seemed at times to distance himself from his group's actions in the last two years, even as he insisted that he was its only leader.

''When I was with them,'' he said, ''they don't use to commit such atrocities. Even I am not saying they are not committing atrocities, but why should the R.U.F. commit such atrocities by amputating people, the people we've come to free? We are freedom fighters, and the people are feeding us. Their children are fighting this war.''

Mr. Sankoh's representatives and officials of the Government have been meeting for the last few weeks in this quiet seaside capital to try to end a fierce eight-year-old civil war that has left Sierra Leone a country in name alone.

The talks have gone slowly but well, people involved in the negotiations say. Both sides are now down to discussing the rebels' role in a transitional government and the future role of a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force known as Ecomog.

But reducing the chance of an enduring peace are two unresolved points: the legacy of the atrocities committed by the Revolutionary United Front and Mr. Sankoh's role in a transitional government. The negotiators have chosen in many ways not to tackle these issues, one Government representative said, ''because we want to have peace.''

''It's like having two evils,'' the representative said of the choices between pursuing the war or negotiating with Mr. Sankoh. ''We can only choose the lesser one.''

Mr. Sankoh does not see it that way. Once a corporal in Sierra Leone's army, as well as a commercial photographer, with a primary school education, he believes he has been fighting to free Sierra Leoneans since he took up arms in 1991. With vague talk of wanting to destroy the ''rotten system'' that had left most people in his diamond-rich country poor, Mr. Sankoh waged a war from the jungle and preached agrarian values.

''In the bush there, we started our ideology, grass-roots development,'' Mr. Sankoh said. ''We worked very hard. I tilled the soil. I had my farm, my swamp, my poultry.''

''That motivated me, and poverty, and corruption, tribalism, nepotism, etc., etc., and the vices of capitalism,'' he added, reducing his voice to a whisper and crunching his nose. ''The vices of injustice, what you call injustice, you know, all these things. So that is why I took up arms.''

After five years of fighting, Mr. Sankoh signed a peace treaty in 1996 with the newly elected President, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. But the agreement began unraveling after Mr. Sankoh was arrested in Nigeria in 1997 on charges of trafficking arms, allegations that he denied. Eventually, soldiers backed by Mr. Sankoh's rebels toppled President Kabbah.

Reports of atrocities began emerging in 1998 after the Ecomog forces restored President Kabbah to power in March. Civilians with chopped off arms and legs throughout the country said Mr. Sankoh's rebels had mutilated them, instead of simply killing them, so that they would serve as living symbols of terror.

The campaign worked, as the rebels recruited more and more young men and boys to join their movement, often by forcing them to commit atrocities and drugging them, survivors and international aid organizations said.

The eight-year civil war -- whose number of deaths, estimated at 14,000, is low in comparison with other wars in this decade -- marked a new, brutish turn in warfare on the continent.

After Mr. Sankoh was convicted of treason last October and sentenced to death, the rebels stepped up their attacks and mounted an assault in December on the capital, Freetown. The rebels nearly seized Freetown in January, and in their retreat, they killed and maimed thousands. At the time, despite survivors' own accounts that the rebels had mutilated them, Mr. Sankoh's group denied all responsibility.

The fighting continued until last month when a cease-fire for the current talks went into effect. Since then, Mr. Sankoh has been the star guest in this city, a smallish, soft-spoken man with a graying beard, sighted frequently in his hotel on the 36th-floor restaurant, where the other night he shared a booth with his secretary, Josephine, touching her head with his and holding her hand.

''If he were in Europe, Foday Sankoh would have been tried a long time ago as a war criminal,'' the Government negotiator said, not with anger but with a resignation that made him slump, burnt-out cigarette between his fingers, on the edge of his hotel bed at 9 A.M. ''But it's Africa; it's a small country. That is basically what it is.''

Mr. Sankoh said he had no idea how many had died in the war. Members of the rebel group who committed atrocities will be punished, he said. But why should he be held responsible for atrocities that occurred during his years of imprisonment?

''Can you punish the father for the sins of the son?'' he asked. But Mr. Sankoh seemed torn between his desire for absolution and his desire to be recognized as the uncontested leader of the Revolutionary United Front, past and future.

''You cannot control people in the war front, especially I have been away,'' he said. ''This should not be an excuse that because I am not with them, that is why they are committing atrocities. It should not be an excuse. My absence should not be an excuse.''

''It has happened in China. It has happened in Asia. It has happened in Europe -- worse than what has happened in Sierra Leone. So you can't say anything about Sankoh. I have my own beliefs. I am fighting for justice. I am fighting for democracy. What matter? When I succeed, you will not say anything about Sankoh. Give me two, three years, and see what Sankoh will be able to do.''